With each new release of DNN I anxiously download the documentation hoping to find fresh, updated information. Every time I'm disappointed.
Most of the documentation is incredibly old with much of it dating back to late 2005. Why even bother including a documentation download link with each distro? Maybe the information has been updated and some anomaly is directing my browser to the ancient versions.
It seems there are at least three possible scenarios for this situation. First, perhaps the core team feels there is so much community support and help available online that the documentation no longer needs to be updated. Or, perhaps they want to create opportunities for 3rd parties to earn service revenue (or sell books). The last possibility I've considered is that a purposeful effort is being made to create demand for the support subscriptions of the DotNetNuke Corporation.
A vast amount of very excellent reference information and tutorials are available online. Those who share their knowledge freely are to be applauded. However, there should be a single official source of documentation for the core features of DNN. The documents included with the software certainly don't fit the bill.
If the leaders of DNN have already specified the source we should look to for up-to-date and complete documentation then would somebody please let me know where it is. If not, then I would be happy to contribute to a project team with the goal of updating and maintaining the downloadable information.
I personally prefer well formatted, searchable, printable documents for the technologies with which I work. It's also nice to have the option of instructing others to RTFM sometimes - when you can be sure the FM will provide them with the answers they need.
Christopher Hansen